Formative influences

EDWARD HAWKE lived from 1705 to 1781. His father was a barrister of Lincoln's Inn who died in 1718. Very little is known of Hawke's early years. He had a sister called Frances who married the son of a bishop. But a feature of Hawke's life is the lack of anything like the fund of private documentation that illuminates the life of his tactical inheritor, Horatio Nelson. However, the tenuous strength of Hawke's naval patronage compares quite closely with Nelson's. It stemmed from his mother's brother, Colonel Martin Bladen who was a Member of Parliament, a commissioner of trade and plantations from 1717 to 1746, and an ally of Sir Robert Walpole, prime minister from 1721 to 1742. Bladen had strong West Indian interests to which were added vast plantations through his second marriage in 1728. This was a time when the politically influential classes were increasingly committed to the belief that Britain's future lay in colonial expansion and the growth of trade. This called for a strong navy, and Bladen's influence underlay the length of time that Hawke spent in the pestilential West Indies between 1720 and 1743.

Hawke entered the navy as a volunteer on 10 February 1720 and learned his seamanship the hard way. Serving in the small frigate Seahorse, he experienced tempestuous weather in the West Indies in December, when the ship's mainmast was blown out. This was a station where seamanship was at a premium.